Week 9 - Finding Serenity
She pivots, weightless, and then springs off of the bulkhead behind her. The red lights are flashing through the ship, and in some corner of her mind, she wonders at the rotational cycle of the twirling. She quickly ignores it, though, focusing on the more pressing matter: not dying.
A micrometeorite shower was most likely, she thought, given the numerous failures all at once, all across the small scout ship. Otherwise, the path was clear and the radar would've woken her about any larger objects that would've intersected with her. But it was all academic now, honestly. Three out of four of the maneuvering thrusters were dead, and the life support system was on emergency.
Still, as she sealed off all of the rooms, one by one, she realized that it could be worse. There was still power, even if some of the lines had been sheared, and there was still life support, as minimal as it was. She calmed her breathing, looking at the screens, and then dismissed the alarms. She would do inventory, and then-
And then the world spun, and she was slammed into the 'ceiling', and then the floor, and dully realized that a rib was broken from the sharp stabbing in her chest, as the ship spun about her and she grabbed for something, anything. The warning lights came back on, by themselves, announcing a loss of pressure, and she fell back to the deck as the ship stabilized. She understood, through the haze of pain: a meteor hit, probably, shearing the ship in half, unseen because the short range scanners must have failed. Her first thought was to assess the damages, but then she looked down and realized, dully, that the broken rib was protruding from her chest, white with specks of red.
I'm going to die, she thinks, and her training can't override the fact that she can literally trace one of the bones of her body, that she sees the insides of herself and there's no one within a hundred million light years and the pressure's failing and life support is gone and-
And then, slowly, surely, she starts crawling, hitching, shoving non-responsive mass towards the hibernation platform. It wouldn't stay up for long if the power died, but it was that or bleed to death.
Every inch, every jerk causes a lance of fire in her, causes her breath to become more and more labored, causes a wetness on her lips and on her chest and a fogginess in her brain, but she doesn't stop, even as her brain tells her that there is really nothing left, that she should just let the fogginess take her.
But she doesn't.
She doesn't.
And as the warning bells start to announce that the pressure loss was overcoming the compensation, she drags herself into the pod, curling up inside, gasping and crying and spitting out blood, and she closes the hatch, activates the cycle, as the dark takes over.
.
The broken piece of the ship spins on, lights flickering, still on some semblance of its original trajectory, towards a small marble light years away, a blue and green planet with a singular moon.
A micrometeorite shower was most likely, she thought, given the numerous failures all at once, all across the small scout ship. Otherwise, the path was clear and the radar would've woken her about any larger objects that would've intersected with her. But it was all academic now, honestly. Three out of four of the maneuvering thrusters were dead, and the life support system was on emergency.
Still, as she sealed off all of the rooms, one by one, she realized that it could be worse. There was still power, even if some of the lines had been sheared, and there was still life support, as minimal as it was. She calmed her breathing, looking at the screens, and then dismissed the alarms. She would do inventory, and then-
And then the world spun, and she was slammed into the 'ceiling', and then the floor, and dully realized that a rib was broken from the sharp stabbing in her chest, as the ship spun about her and she grabbed for something, anything. The warning lights came back on, by themselves, announcing a loss of pressure, and she fell back to the deck as the ship stabilized. She understood, through the haze of pain: a meteor hit, probably, shearing the ship in half, unseen because the short range scanners must have failed. Her first thought was to assess the damages, but then she looked down and realized, dully, that the broken rib was protruding from her chest, white with specks of red.
I'm going to die, she thinks, and her training can't override the fact that she can literally trace one of the bones of her body, that she sees the insides of herself and there's no one within a hundred million light years and the pressure's failing and life support is gone and-
And then, slowly, surely, she starts crawling, hitching, shoving non-responsive mass towards the hibernation platform. It wouldn't stay up for long if the power died, but it was that or bleed to death.
Every inch, every jerk causes a lance of fire in her, causes her breath to become more and more labored, causes a wetness on her lips and on her chest and a fogginess in her brain, but she doesn't stop, even as her brain tells her that there is really nothing left, that she should just let the fogginess take her.
But she doesn't.
She doesn't.
And as the warning bells start to announce that the pressure loss was overcoming the compensation, she drags herself into the pod, curling up inside, gasping and crying and spitting out blood, and she closes the hatch, activates the cycle, as the dark takes over.
.
The broken piece of the ship spins on, lights flickering, still on some semblance of its original trajectory, towards a small marble light years away, a blue and green planet with a singular moon.